Thanksgiving: A Reflection on Humility and Family

1123 Words3 Pages

Thanksgiving is undoubtedly a holiday to celebrate family. It also celebrates many other things, as the name suggests. Thanksgiving is a holiday to give thanks for the things that a person has rather than to wish for more things. Accomplishments and shiny cars are not part of the essence of Thanksgiving, as these do not have the inherent humbleness expected of the holiday. This air of humility and frugality, harkening back to the days of the pilgrims and Native Americans, is probably what lead Ellen Goodman to describe the holiday as a suppressing of individualism. However, the rift between individuality and family that Goodman describes in Thanksgiving is not as deep as she makes it seem, and Thanksgiving Day is hardly the only day of the …show more content…

Goodman claims that "We are, after all, raised in families ... to be individuals" (Goodman 4). But is it impossible for a child to be raised to be a part of a family, not just in a family? Picture a teenage boy, the son of a Korean mother and a Caucasian father. Perhaps it is his East Asian roots speaking, but he certainly does not believe that he has been taught that his individualism defines him. If he were to act rudely in public, his parents would certainly scold him, and tell him that his actions reflect poorly on them. He is by no means released into the world and told that he can do whatever he, as an individual, feels like doing. Instead, he is supported by his family, his mother and father and siblings as well, just as he is expected to reciprocate now and in the future. Perhaps this young man is destined to grow out of this "familial" stage, but as, years later, his father asks how his first day of college was from across the dinner table, he supposes he is not ready to let go of his roots quite yet. Unless this now-college-freshman is somehow deemed un-American in heritage, it is hard to accept the individualistic upbringing as the only way to do

Open Document